


Re-Re-Re

by tb_ll57



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: A Stitch In Time, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, DS9 Relaunch, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Identity Issues, In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light, Inquisition, Inter Arma Silent Leges, Interspecies Relationship(s), Julian-Centric, M/M, Mission Fic, Past Relationship(s), Post-Series, Section 31, Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Unity, Trust Issues, Worlds of Star Trek: Trill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 16:30:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10517532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: Dax was small in his hands, lighter than a bundle of neuro-fibres and tender as brain tissue. It moved sluggishly, released from stasis, as if struggling to communicate. Eagerness, or grief? It knew what was coming. The Dax symbiont hadn't been returned to the breeding pools in nine lifetimes. It wouldn't be now, either. Dax was about to meet its newest host, the tenth in a distinguished line.





	1. Prologue

He'd held this symbiont more times than any other non-Trill doctor had ever documented.

Dax was small in his hands, lighter than a bundle of neuro-fibres and tender as brain tissue. It moved sluggishly, released from stasis, as if struggling to communicate. Eagerness, or grief? It knew what was coming. The Dax symbiont hadn't been returned to the breeding pools in nine lifetimes. It wouldn't be now, either. Dax was about to meet its newest host, the tenth in a distinguished line.

'It's all right,' he murmured, as it spasmed against his palms. He carefully lowered it into a shallow pan of saline, where the grey-white skin peeked above the rim. 'Just a few more minutes.'

'It can't hear you,' his assistant told him, amused by him. 'You should save your comfort for the host. He's been pacing the halls out there, trying to wear a hole in the carpet.'

'The nerves will settle themselves,' he answered. 'In my experience. But you can tell him we're ready. I want the symbiont settled as soon as possible. It's already been unsupported past the outlying allowance.'

'In stasis, at least.' She crossed Sickbay for the doors, releasing the lock with a wave of her palm over the pad. The two halves slid open with a soft sigh of escaping air. 'You can come in now,' she told the delegation in the corridor.

The three Trill who flooded eagerly into the small infirmary all wore identically grave expressions, practising a Vulcan-like restraint in the face of momentous and highly anxious proceedings. But the one in the lead cracked first, betraying his excitement by coming to a wide-eyed halt at the first sight of the operating theatre.

'Is that Dax?' the Trill breathed. 'So much smaller than I imagined.'

'It always seems like that.' The eldest of the Trill, a grey-haired woman with an aristocratic bearing and the silver pips of an Ambassador, squeezed the younger's shoulder with a solemn smile of pride. 'It's time.'

The young man nodded on a deep breath. 'Yes. Yes, I'm ready.'

The operation itself was simple, performed with only a local anaesthetic and a close monitoring of the vital isoboromine levels in both symbiont and host. His assistant provided a friendly pat on the shoulder as, doctor in charge, he lifted Dax into his hands one final time. He thought he felt it pulse. It might have been his own heartbeat, palpitating in startled trips as physical sensations registered in single, contextless surprises. Slippery soft flesh. Humanoid skin, as he peeled back the Trill carry pouch. Almost a fright, as the symbiont abandoned his protective hold, wriggling energetically through the flap of skin he held and disappearing into the internal organs, nestling neatly between the intestinal tract and the greater omentum. It left barely a bulge of new bulk in the host's abdomen as it stilled, settling into the torpor in which it would live for the rest of the host's life.

'Cortical activity spiking,' his assistant said. 'Neurotransmitter levels rising rapidly.'

'Two CCs of diazradol--' He didn't even have to finish before his assistant pressed a hypo into his outstretched hand. He applied it directly to the carry pouch, to benefit both his patients. Of the Joining itself, the play of emotion and memory across a young Trill's face, the difficult assimilation racing on, he saw almost nothing. His own eyes were fixed on the monitors above the biobed, willing the hormone flux to settle, the isoboromine to regulate the neural exchange. Willing the symbiont to overcome that dangerous two-week delay and please, please not enter rejection...

His assistant breathed out in relief. 'All readings exactly at norm, Doctor.'

'Well done!' the Trill Ambassador congratulated him warmly. 'No doctor on our homeworld could have done it better.'

He smiled tightly, automatic lip-service to any exchange of his formal duties. He couldn't unclench. Couldn't look away from that BP reading, the-- yes-- normalising cortical reading, blood chemistry clearing--

A hand on his seized his heart to a full stop. Brown eyes blinked up at his, astonished, not a little dismayed, and, not a little, suddenly familiar.

'Julian?' Dax whispered.

He covered the hand on his. 'Hello,' he said, past the tightness in his throat. 'Can you tell me your name?'

'I—' Long hesitation. Long enough for Julian to gesture his assistant close with another hypo. Then-- 'Saygee,' the man said. 'I'm Saygee.'

The relief rose over him like a whirlwind, leaving him airless and hot and frozen all at once. 'Good,' he managed. 'That's perfect. Welcome back, Saygee.'

 

**

 

The chime roused him from his report-writing in time to face the doors as they opened. He steeled himself to wear the congenial smile he knew he must, and reminded himself he truly was happy to see the man who stepped-- rather tentatively-- into the _Razkil_ 's Sickbay.

'You're up nice and early,' he said, pre-empting the open mouth. 'I expected, and I believe I ordered, you to try for at least 0800.'

Brown spots gleamed with what even Julian had to admit appeared to be robust health as his guest titled his head to look at him. Brown spots, brown hair, brown eyes, with that characteristically pale Trill skin tone; the nose a little too long and the mouth a little wide, but when he suddenly smiled, he was handsome. It was the warm affection in that gaze that did it.

'I'm happy to speak to my doctor,' Saygee Dax said, 'but I'd rather talk with my friend.'

Julian made absolutely sure that the aching twinge in his gut didn't show on his face. 'Of course,' he smiled. 'Sit, then. Tell me how you are. In-- friendly terms.'

'Exhausted!' the not-strange man exclaimed, and fell into the chair Julian nudged toward him. 'It was like sleeping inside a computer-- trying to upload ten lifetimes of data!'

'Eleven, counting that little bit of Verad,' Julian remind him. He fidgeted with a stylus, concious of that outward expression of his inner unease, unable to stop it. 'But you were trained in the Joining Programme?'

'Trained and on the alert for ten years-- until recent events, anyway. You know, Jadzia was originally cut from the training?'

'By Curzon Dax. Yes, I did know.'

'And Ezri never went through the Programme at all.' Saygee's pleasant face screwed to the right in a-- oh-so-- familiar grimace that Julian's stomach turned over. 'I died,' Saygee said. 'I can remember it. It was-- burning.'

He couldn't have replied if he had to. Ezri's body was still in stasis on DS9, waiting on the arrival of her estranged mother. Ezri wouldn't be there when he got back. He'd known that, when he'd agreed to travel with the Dax symbiont to meet the hurriedly convened caravan of Symbiosis Commission delegates. Trill died. Their symbionts had to survive. The accumulated experience and wisdom of the symbiont was the most highly valued facet of Trill society. Even without that cultural imperative, however, Julian had had his own duty. Ezri dead was no longer his patient. Dax was.

The chagrin on Saygee's face was exaggerated. All his emotions would be, Julian had read, until Saygee learnt to settle those old hosts, until Saygee found himself again under the weight of lives longer than his own. Except for the last two hosts. Jadzia had been only thirty-three when she died. Ezri never made it to thirty.

'I've upset you,' Saygee said quietly. Saygee-- but it was Ezri who reached to grab his hand, like it had been Ezri on the biobed yesterday, Ezri staring up at him as she died of shock from plasma burns. 'Julian, I'm sorry. I know you did everything you could.'

The doctor who'd been trained to say that in the clear bright halls of Starfleet Medical had since lost patients by the score in battles he could in no way stop or control. He'd lost entire planets. Teplar was still infected by the Blight, and whole generations would die before the vaccinated children could grow to adulthood. Cardassia Prime was still recovering from the Dominion's final retaliatory strike that had decimated the urban centres and polluted the atmosphere with deadly ash. The doctor who'd lost friends and comrades too had kept it in perspective through the knowledge that one doctor did what one doctor could do. But there was no war now. There were no battles in which it was understood that good people would die. He'd lost two women he loved only years apart, and the doctor in him who had the most practical experience of Trill physiology outside any physician on Trill itself still didn't have it in him not to resent the hell out of the entirely innocent man who now carried both those women inside him.

He forced that dead-feeling smile back to his mouth. 'Have you eaten?' he asked. 'I was about to head to Mess for breakfast. Resuming your normal activities will help the assimilation process.'

He managed better remove from there out. The walk to Mess was full of embarrassing, curious, amusing, sometimes poignant displays of a brand-new Joined Trill in constant discovery that a previous host had done some exact same thing-- a radical notion that found expression in tripping feet, awkward gestures, outbursts that veered from the enthusiastic to the grossly overpersonal. There was one rather athletic recovery from a near-miss with a bulkhead that Julian thought counted as a win. Saygee wore an abashed grin as he attributed the save, with evident surprise, to Emony, the gymnast host.

'Dax has had a lot of female hosts,' Saygee confessed, as they finally made it to the Mess and the early-shift queues for the replicator. 'I feel almost like I don't fit in my own body.'

'You'll adjust,' Julian said, not unkindly. 'Here. Order your food, but make sure you order something you liked before the Joining.'

'Good advice.' Saygee squared his shoulders to the task. 'Right.'

The two elder Trill were seated near the back, behind the dozen or so Starfleet staff who walled off the Mess with sleepy chatter. They inclined their heads to Julian's guarded acknowledgment. They seemed friendly, given what Julian and Ezri had discovered two years ago on the Trill homeworld. Perhaps he was forgiven his part in that, by acting now to save Dax by streaking across half the universe on three starships to meet their selected host. The civil turmoil on Trill had calmed in the two years since the neural bombs had considerably reduced the population of healthy symbionts. New Joinings were, by all he knew, only performed in emergencies. Like the lone Trill on a Deep Space Station being trapped in a collapsed Jeffries tube on the _Defiant_ during a freak ion storm.

Dax would never have survived long enough to make it to the safety of the breeding pools. Saygee might be one of the lucky Joined Trill who wouldn't come under pressure to give up the symbiont when-- if-- he ever returned to Trill. Julian didn't know. He didn't plan on asking. He'd done his job. When the _Razkil_ docked at Starbase 08, Julian would be off it and as far away from the Trill delegation as he could get.

Saygee interrupted his thoughts, turning from the replicator with a well-loaded tray. Julian snapped back to the present, tuning in to moving lips knowing his inattention hadn't been spotted. 'I hope you don't mind,' Saygee was saying, 'but I ordered for us both. I'danian spice pudding, scones, raspberry jam, and Tarkalean tea, am I right?'

'Sounds good.' Two officers cleared a table for them, and they sat in a pocket of space as bodies around them shuffled out for duties elsewhere. He was profoundly unhungry. It was all he could do to sip the tea. 'Talk about yourself,' he said, once again interrupting lips that parted to speak. 'Try to assert your native personality.'

'You've been doing research,' Saygee grinned. 'When I was-- when Ezri was-- going through this--' He sucked in his cheeks. 'I see what you mean. I don't even realise it until it's out of my mouth.'

'Just do the best you can. Tell me about your last assignment? What were doing, before you got the call about the symbiont?'

'Diplomatic mission, on the sly. We're in talks with the Tellarites, trying to convince them Trill really is a civilised planet again. We're hoping they'll withdraw their insistence to the Federation that we're too unstable to be a member planet.' Saygee sipped his coffee. 'Of course, I'm the junior member. Ambassador Folt is treating me more like a secretary than an expert in conference negotiation. I can hardly tell the Tellarites that Trill has eradicated the caste system when there's a Joined Ambassador standing next to an un-Joined junior, telling me to fetch the luggage and the drinks, thanks. But being Joined might make the hypocrisy even more apparent. Three Joined Trill to represent our planet? We're talking out of both sides our mouth, I think.' He sipped again, and set the mug aside with a scrunched nose.

'Something wrong with the replicator?' Julian asked. 'It gave me pickle curry on the way here.'

'No-- not the replicator.' Saygee scrubbed the back of his neck. 'I think I just-- I don't like coffee anymore.'

'Curzon preferred raktajino. Jadzia started something of a fad on DS9 with it. You should regain old preferences as--'

'As I assimilate,' Saygee finished. 'I don't mean to complain. It's certainly a fascinating experience. But I'm glad you're here to keep reminding me.' He touched Julian's hand, limp beside his breakfast tray. 'I know it must be hard for you.'

He removed his fingers as quickly as he could without giving offence; it felt torturously slow. 'The least I can do.'

'The least you could do would be to run out the door and never look back, and I wouldn't blame you.'

For a moment, he thought he'd been caught out. But it was only Jadzia's effortless candour-- that disarming habit of cutting straight to the quick before backing gently off.

'I just thought of something.' Saygee glanced behind him for the other Trill. 'This doesn't count as Reassociation, does it? Given our-- your and Ezri's-- past relationship?'

'I've already asked them,' Julian confessed. 'I disclosed the entirety, including that it's been over-- was over between us, for two years now. The short duration and the fact that I'm not a Joined Trill myself seemed to render it moot.'

'I've always thought that was a stupid rule.'

'You know from Jadzia that Reassociation isn't just a paranoid fantasy,' Julian rebuked him. 'When Dax and Lenara Kahn--'

'Not Reassocation. I mean the idea that it can only happen between Joined Trill-- a love strong enough to overcome the death of a host is certainly strong enough to overcome race.' Saygee dropped his eyes. 'I think for the moment I'll try to suffer through the coffee, but Curzon may have won another convert to that Klingon acid-water.'

'As you think best,' Julian said faintly, and hid his clenched fists in his lap.


	2. One

Six days, twenty-two hours, nineteen minutes, and a rapidly accruing number of seconds.

Saygee Dax seemed determined to spend all of that time in his company as the _Razkil_ wended its way through Space toward Starbase 08. He arrived promptly for breakfast and stayed late in evening conversation. They ate meals together, took exercise together in the small on-board facilities, walked at length through the _Razkil_ 's pleasantly opaque corridors together. In fact the only time Julian had solely to himself was when he bathed and slept. He was doing considerably more of the former, and barely any of the latter.

As a doctor, he knew he needed restful sleep. As a doctor, he also knew how far a genetically-engineered body could be pushed. When his quarters' doors closed after Saygee's latest invasion, he didn't close his eyes. He worked. There was always research, never enough hours in which to complete it. When a clouding mind, even a genetically enhanced one, began to make mistakes, he sat on the small cushioned Federation couch in his brightly lit, white-walled Federation living space, and wondered when the angular, spartan dim of Cardassian architecture had replaced his notion of home.

He would be able to leave the Trill in good conscience when they docked. Saygee was sailing through assimilation, had even stopped referring to past hosts as 'I' in unguarded talk. There was no possible service Julian could offer now that could not be handed as well or better by someone else. He would be another nine days on the Starbase, until a ship passed that was headed for Deep Space. Three weeks before he'd be back on a station increasingly destitute of friends, the family that had been forged and been broken there. Sisko, Kasidy and Jake, Kira, even Quark-- good people, but not close friends. Maybe in time they would be. But not a replacement for the ones who had left, the ones who wouldn't come back. The ones who couldn't.

He prescribed himself a mood stabiliser, but didn't take it. He did swallow a mild pain reliever and forced himself to lay on his too-soft Federation bed, for a few hours alone in the dark.

 

**

 

 _'Then it went well?'_ Sisko asked mildly.

'Yes, sir. The symbiont didn't seem to suffer unduly, though I dislike leaving anyone in stasis that long. The operation itself was textbook. And the integration with the host is well on course.'

 _'Commendable,'_ Sisko said, one of those rare true compliments. Julian wished it registered more than a vague sense of unworthiness. He had done well, and he knew it. It was the need for such an operation that was the difficulty.

He heard the peculiarly resistant rush of doors closing on Sisko's end-- Kira, departing. Sisko's dark eyes followed her out; then returned to the screen, and Julian, with a new energy. His captain leant in toward the viewscreen.

 _'So?'_ Sisko said.

Julian blinked, caught flat-footed. 'So, sir?'

 _'So what is he_ like? _The new Dax.'_

New Dax. Out with the old.

Oh, not fair. He was in a bitter mood this evening. Sisko had known Dax far longer than Julian, after all. He just hadn't been as close with Ezri-- could not have been, having been absent so much of her time on DS9, with the war, his time with the Prophets, raising a young family between Bajor and the station. It just made Ezri seem-- like nothing more than a bookmark.

'He's in his early thirties,' Julian reported, striking a neutral tone. 'Trained in Trill Foreign Service and distinguished even so young. I believe he was actually on hold for the Jala symbiont, before the Joinings were suspended.'

 _'Tell me something that isn't in his file, Doctor.'_ Sisko propped his bearded chin on his fist. _'Sense of humour?'_

'It's-- maybe too soon to tell. I think so.'

That pleased the Captain. _'What else?'_

'He's talkative, though that may just be the excitement of trying to process so much new. He's-- very engaging. He seems very likable. And I think he has a fair sense of how becoming a host in the current climate on Trill could cause him difficulty. He's ready for it. Not intimidated.'

 _'Dax never is.'_ Sisko settled back in his chair. _'That's a good thing, Julian. All very good things.'_

'Yes, sir.'

There was a short, assessing silence. _'You'll be headed back after you meet up with the_ Brighton _?'_

'Barring any unforeseen side trips. They're aware that in my absence DS9 is without a CMO. It's a priority, at least until something more important arises.'

_'Then we'll hope for the best. Although Doctor Tarses is doing just fine in your absence-- even if he is noticeably less personable.'_

'He never has believed you need the niceties.' The things he most wanted to ask weren't appropriate to ask of the Captain of a busy station, and so he held his tongue on whether Ezri's mother had come yet. If there'd been the wake as planned. If life had been interrupted at all by one accidental death. If anyone had told Worf, yet.

 _'I'm sure you're busy,'_ Sisko said finally, when neither of them could fill the pause. _'I'll let you get back to work.'_

Julian nodded. 'Yes, sir.'

_'But-- try to get Dax to visit DS9, will you? Tell him I'll throw in a family dinner planet-side.'_

'I will-- tell him. Sir.' Sisko's head inclined to him, and the screen reverted to the Federation seal. Julian turned it off with the tip of his finger.

He had no longer than it took to shave in his bathroom before the computer chimes announced a visitor. He checked his chin quickly and stepped into the living area. 'Come,' he called.

It was, of course, the subject of his call, because there was no-one else on board but his assistant who had any reason to visit him. Saygee entered with his hands locked behind his back, and Julian forced his eyes up away from that familiar gesture.

'I was just speaking to Captain Sisko,' Julian said, to get in front of that opening mouth. 'He extends his congratulations on the successful Joining.'

'Benjamin?' Saygee swayed lightly on the balls of his feet, saying it as if he were tasting the word and finding it unexpectedly tart. 'I can't believe how much I know about a man I've never met.' He grinned suddenly, disarmingly. 'I'm still not used to him having hair again.'

'He—' His throat was thick. 'Says you should visit. DS9, Bajor.'

That seemed to land even harder. Saygee sank onto Julian's couch, twisting a finger around the piping of his suit jacket. 'Visit,' he echoed. 'I... don't know.'

'Why not?' The chair was just far enough away to risk it, if he kept his feet tucked in. He sat gingerly. 'You know he'd be perfectly welcoming.'

'That might be the problem. When he was a younger man, I'm not sure he understood so well what being Joined meant. He accepted Jadzia so easily because he expected just another Curzon. It was such a learning curve for him, not always the easiest. But now he does know it's not that simple. I'm sure it was a sincere offer, but when he has time to really think about it...'

'Then he'll make exactly the same invitation. And it will be just as sincere.'

Saygee rubbed a finger over his upper lip. Whatever thoughts he had were not making it, for once, to his lips. He really was settling back into himself. Even the night before he hadn't been in such control.

'Maybe you're right,' Saygee conceded at last. 'In any case, both he and I have a long time to think about it. Tellar is a long way from DS9.'

That eased Julian's attack of nerves. It was just the sudden image of Saygee walking the Promenade, laughing over dinner at Quark's, peering down at a console in Ops.

'Come for a walk with me,' Saygee said then. 'For some reason I just can't sit still anymore.'

It was the last thing he wanted to do. He forced his lips to curl upward. 'Of course.'

They were barely out the door when Saygee resumed that irrepressible chatter that Julian suspected plagued all companions of newly Joined Trill. 'It really is extraordinary,' Saygee announced. 'How immediate the sensations are. Last night, I even had phantom food cravings!'

'Whose?' Julian asked politely.

'Tobin. He was hungry every minute of his life, between you and me. For better or worse, though, I'm allergic to molba sprouts.'

They passed out of living quarters and into the main corridors. Saygee-- pre-Dax-- was a self-confessed bookish sort, not afraid of hard work but not particularly partial to sweating. Among newly acquired tastes, he'd said, was a desire to be up and moving at all untoward moments. Julian didn't know which host was responsible for that relic. All of them, perhaps.

All Joined Trill seemed to have an air of-- self-consciously so, Julian thought-- studied ancientness, carrying themselves above the fray with that faint wink that seemed to say 'let the children have their fun'. Only Dax, all of the Dax hosts that Julian had known, let themselves free to enjoy the world. The Dax hosts were adventurers, in all senses. Looking back, Julian could see a definite arc in Jadzia's personality. The natural reserve of a young scientist had been gradually grown into a verve and a twinkle for life that had been as infectious as a virus.

Saygee Dax was going to lose his good reputation, Julian thought privately. Worse, Saygee probably didn't know it yet.

Jadzia could have explained it. Ezri had only just begun to enjoy it, before--

Smiling brown eyes slanted sideways to him as they circled past the lift for the _Razkil_ 's upper command bridge.

'I keep stopping myself from boarding that,' the Trill offered. 'Jadzia never got tired of the energy in there.'

It was a duller sort of pain to hear her name mentioned, too. He'd had time to mourn her, accept her death. Accept that the brief affair with Ezri had been a not-very veiled attempt to recapture what he'd never had. The irony being, he'd at last been able to love Ezri for herself when he no longer had her, either.

'You're quiet today.'

Exhausted. Just-- not at a point where his body could speak louder than his mind.

'I'm no doctor,' Dax said, 'but you're pale, a little pinched, and--' Julian flinched back from the unexpected application of a typically cold Trill hand to his forehead and cheek. 'You're warm.'

'A touch of something,' he excused himself vaguely, stepping out and away from that gentle touch as though he were mostly intent on continuing their walk. 'You were saying something yesterday about your family?'

'My sister, Marva.' Saygee fell into pace with him, taking his bait agreeably enough. 'I messaged her to tell her the news. She was not most enthusiastic. She's young,' he half-apologised, with an anxious-looking frown Julian couldn't interpret. 'She was in school during the real explosion of anti-Joining sentiment. She thinks I've become an elitist snob-- or worse, that I'm personally jeopardising the viability of the symbionts by not returning Dax to the Mak'ala for breeding. There's not a lot of consistency in the screaming, but that seems to be the gist.'

'Frustrating,' Julian agreed. They took the turn toward Mess. He put on a burst of speed, not wanting Saygee to suggest they stop in. If he had to choke down another cup of tea while Saygee rambled on about the disruption of his old diet--

Easy to forget Ezri had used to run on like that, too. Maybe it was her, tripping words over themselves in nervous babble. He'd used to find it so endearingly annoying.

'I can't even get her to listen to the good parts. The really amazing parts, like knowing--'

The awkward silence was too abrupt to miss. Julian risked a glance. Saygee had gone quite silent indeed-- a true Saygee quality, with a close guarded blankness to his face and eyes unfocussed, inward.

'The knowing what?' Julian asked him.

Saygee let out a slow, measured breath. 'An Elder in the Programme once told me it was like being handed a Book of Secrets,' he said. 'Lifetimes of knowledge, and often still with living friends and loved ones around us who would not really be our friends and loved ones. She told me that the urge, the need to share these things we suddenly knew might be almost irresistible. But that we should resist. The knowledge and experience of the symbionts is a tremendous gift. But equally, sometimes, a vehicle of pain, of grief.'

She'd just blurted it out. He'd remembered it with crystalline clarity every time he looked at her.

It would have been you, Ezri had told him. If Worf hadn't come along.

Graceless. Tactless. He'd hated her, a little, for it. Been unbearably grateful to know, until the what-ifs began to eat him alive.

'Julian.' A touch to his elbow. He halted, because the other man had, facing him in that halo of bright Federation light, trying to force expression onto his face.

On Saygee's, there was only hurt, being carefully boxed away behind lowered yes. 'I didn't see it until just now,' he said. 'You really can't stand to be around me.'

The dry spasm of his stomach agreed. But he truly hadn't meant to make his feelings obvious. 'It's not you,' he said, flat and unconvincing.

'It's Dax.' Saygee released him. Then gripped him anew by the arm, firmly, even a little roughly. 'This is what it's like for the Joined. Granted that we're expected to live longer, full lives with friends who don't outlive two hosts-- both Jadzia and Ezri knew when they put on a Starfleet uniform that they might not have all those decades. And I'm sorry you were the one who felt responsible for it happening, but Julian, you're more than just my doctor or my shipmate. You're my friend. Having you with me these past few days has kept me from pure panic. More than that--' As Julian tried to shake him off. 'More than that, it's given me a link to all these memories and thoughts and feelings in Dax that I never would have understood without having you standing in front of me, guiding me through. If you need time to adjust to it-- I can give that. But I would hate to lose you.'

Maybe all it had needed was the confrontation. Or maybe it was because, for the first time, there was nothing identifiably Dax in that softly passionate declaration. Jadzia would have flayed him with shame and forgiven him with an arched eyebrow. Ezri would have asked him how he felt, tried in total earnest to help him, and end out telling him a little too much about the chaos in her own head.

Maybe it was just time.

He managed his first genuine smile in two weeks. 'All I can promise right now is that I'll try,' he said. 'Not that I'll manage. But-- I will try.'

Saygee's grip relaxed to a tender squeeze. 'I'll take it.'

 

**

 

'Can I ask something personal?'

He stopped himself from picking at a seam in his trouser leg. 'Of course,' he replied. 'Will it make me blush?'

Saygee grinned briefly. 'Do you still keep in touch with your patients from the Institute? Jack and Patrick, what was her name--'

'Lauren. Yes, I still get the occasional letter.'

'But nothing from the other girl? Sirina?'

His cheeks were faintly warm. 'No. I haven't spoken to her since-- she took a position at a resource satellite. Lauren has passed on the odd bit of news.'

'I had wondered. Given the way you felt about her.'

'The way I felt was a confusion between my duty as a doctor and something like Dr Frankenstein watching his creature come to life. I was so mesmerised by what I'd changed in her I forgot there was a girl who needed--'

Saygee sat silent, waiting for him to finish. But just for a moment, there, just a slip of a second, he'd almost forgot it wasn't his Dax.

'What brought them to mind?' he asked.

'Believe it or not, I actually managed to get a little work done last night. Of course, Jadzia was there when you brought them to DS9, when you gave them data to analyse about the Dominion War, how successful they were in predicting troop movements, even spotting the real motives of alien diplomats.'

Julian caught on. 'You think they can apply the same skills to Trill's situation?'

'I'm the first to admit I haven't completely thought it through, but hear me out.' Saygee hunched toward him, hands out and down in a gesture calculated to pacify even as they entreated. 'Given that the experiment seemed to encourage some god-complex behaviour in them, yes, I think there's a lot of reason to be wary of approaching them again. But Trill is at her weakest right now, and our leaders are making it worse by engaging in an accidental chauvanism. They absolutely will not turn to anyone outside Trill for help, and that, frankly, is what gives the Tellarites two years of ammunition in this bid to have us closed out of the Federation. But there may be ways to get around the usual diplomatic blocks and demonstrate that we are open to outside perceptions. Your three brilliant friends at the Instit--'

'I'm sorry,' Julian interrupted. 'It's not that I disagree with what you're saying, but they're in no way prepared to conduct diplomacy, behind the scenes or otherwise. I can't see what you think they could do to help.'

'They're genetically altered individuals,' Saygee said. 'Not entirely unlike the parasites. And Earth had its own Eugenics War, generations ago. You sitting here with me now demonstrates one avenue of progress, how Trill society can reconcile with our past and grow from it. Your friends at the Institute can be visible faces, even as they help us design solutions to prevent further damage to the symbiont population.'

He was struck dumb, for a moment. 'These are almost entirely isolate people,' he retorted. 'I don't think you or, forgive me, Jadzia understand that. Nor do I find it particularly agreeable for genetically enhanced humans to be compared to parasites who have repeatedly infiltrated the Federation in pursuit of a revenge vendetta.'

Saygee sat back immediately, broad palms now help up between them for reconciliation. 'That is absolutely not how I meant it. I'm sorry-- I didn't think it would sound like that. You're right, of course. I didn't think that.'

'No, I'm almost positive you did.' Suspicion became proof when Saygee's eyes flinched to the left. Julian had become very adept at reading that alien body language since posting to DS9-- a gift of his own genetically enhanced brain that Saygee hadn't known about. But Jadzia had. As Jadzia had agreed that his 'friends' at the Institute deserved peace far more than the Federation deserved to use them like a handy computer application, to churn out data analysis on demand and disappear when no longer useful. But more than that, even, Ezri had seen what happened when Sirina had been overwhelmed by her exposure to too much too fast. People whose entire lives had been four walls and decades of ever-vaster theory about a universe they'd never experienced were utterly incapable of making informed choices. And Saygee hadn't known that when he framed his argument, which meant Saygee had been plotting it before he'd become Saygee Dax.

Suddenly, the personal request that Dr Julian Bashir accompany the symbiont came into unflattering clarity.

'I assume you've already approached someone else with this idea,' he said.

Saygee nodded slowly. 'Vice-President Ross. He recommended we go to you first.'

Ross. The rest of the pieces fell into place. Ross had been sending him careful feelers since the election campaign, wanting to be sure his silence about Section 31 wouldn't break at an inopportune moment. Interesting that Ross would use this as another olive branch, given--

Yes. Given that data that wasn't being mentioned.

The Jem'Hadar hatchery on Sidorin. Section 31 had recovered all of Ethan Locken's experiments with genetic manipulation. Whatever Ross' connections to Section 31 might be... they surely included at least a broad outline of what that data meant for the modern science of eugenics.

Saygee knew enough to peck at the edges of the question. Innocently? Julian didn't know. Maybe Ross had only provided the very tip of that very large iceberg, some tantalising hint of advances that could perhaps be reviewed by those genetic geniuses at the Institute, monsters who could never, ever make use of any conclusions they drew from their pretty theories. The pet freaks-- useful for calculations but laughably safer than a Locken or even a Bashir, who couldn't be trusted not to draw that line of absolute morality in the sand.

And then when he did that it would be him standing between Trill's future and a seemingly reasonable request to loan out a few patients for a day or two to play with computer simulations. With a Dax on the other side of the line.

If he was never going to be free of Section 31, at least he was getting better at seeing through their stratagems.

By what grace he would never know, but he was spared an answer by the beep of an incoming transmission. He rose jerkily to his feet and tapped 'receive' at the table-top viewer before he thought of privacy. The face that appeared on screen startled him clear out of that thought, anyway. 'Commander Vaughn,' he said. 'I didn't know you were-- back.'

The aged face that gazed at him was shaded with what Julian instantly recognised as the green-grey lights of the _Defiant_ 's bridge. The view was tight, but he saw one familiar face as well-- Ro Laren, unusually off-station. She looked grim, but she so often had, since the near-fatal attack two years earlier than had left her in chronic pain.

 _'Doctor Bashir,'_ Vaughn greeted him. _'I understand from Benjamin that the new Joining went well. Dax survived the transfer.'_

Vaughn had been Ezri's XO for two years. There were new lines on his face, grief that, like Julian's, was going to be slow to fade. More than Sisko, Vaughn knew exactly who had been lost, and under his command, as well.

'Yes,' Julian answered honestly. 'Yes, it was successful. She would be glad.'

Vaughn's weary, down-turned glance agreed. Julian found he could breathe more easily, suddenly. Some little part of him, a not very adult and not very fair part, relished the satisfaction of finally facing a companion who wouldn't throw open his arms to Saygee just because he had Dax inside him.

The adult and professional was still worried about the trap closing in with that very attractive bait.

Vaughn put it all aside with a heavy sigh. _'Doctor, I'm afraid I have to recall you to DS9 earlier than planned.'_

'I just spoke with Captain Sisko yesterday,' Julian said, not protesting, but curious. 'He didn't mention--'

 _'One of those delightful surprises that flips on in the blink of an eye,'_ Vaughn said. Then, attention briefly diverted, he listened to a voice out of range, and a moment later nodded shortly. _'Bring her about and head for the wormhole, quarter-impulse.'_

Julian waited to be acknowledged again. It took only moments. _'We've asked the_ USS Knott _to divert to your current heading. You'll rendezvous in twelve hours forty-six minutes, transfer ships, and meet the_ Defiant _at Deep Space 2.'_

'Understood.'

_'I'll brief you fully on arrival. Til then, do me a favour and keep a low profile.'_

As warnings went, that was an odd one. Julian's was not a well-known face in the Federation. Except, of course, to certain elements-- like the one he'd just been wondering might have been pulling strings to get a symbiont in an ally.

'Yes, sir,' Julian said, and with a final nod, Vaughn signed off.


	3. Two

'Thank you for your help this week,' Julian said again. 'You were invaluable.'

'I didn't do much.' The young doctor, Aylam Edeen, who had assisted him through Dax's surgery, would be headed home on the original plan by waiting for the _Brighton_ at Starbase 2. 'Now you just promise me to try to get some sleep,' she added, winking a flawless green eye.

Julian smiled wanly. 'It doesn't seem to be in the cards anytime soon, but I'll try.' He gave one last pat to the portable stasis unit he'd used to transport the symbiont so very far. It, too, would be headed back for Bajoran space, eventually to resume its place in his Infirmary.

'All right,' he said. 'I'll see you in a couple of weeks, Edeen.'

'See you soon, Julian.'

His walk to the _Razkil_ 's Transporter Bay was almost as quiet as it had been when he'd first arrived on board. He'd been in a rush then to get Dax stabilised and he hadn't had words to spare for the ensign who'd escorted him to Sickbay. Subsequently he'd been largely ignored by the crew, who went about their business either unconcerned with or unaware of the unique medical phenomenon happening on their ship. To Julian, who had never been posted on a ship except for the warcraft _Defiant_ 's generally short excursions, it was a little like stepping onto an alien planet. No-one on DS9 took the proximity of their doctor for granted. They'd lived a hard life there; first the reconstruction of the station, when injuries had been common and often deadly, then their expanding exploration of the Gamma Quadrant, with all its attendant dangers. The war had been a heart-stopping game of triage for years on end-- the worst kind of medicine. In war limbs were lost that might have been saved in a true hospital, and those injuries were still better than the ones just devastating enough that field surgery could only prolong pain to the inevitable end. Dreams of his neatly ordered infirmary, of medicine that improved life and enabled happiness-- the clean Starfleet medicine he'd been trained to practise-- that was what that little Sickbay behind him yielded. But after ten years at Deep Space 9, Julian only just realised how he'd been changed by that messy, adrenalised frenzy of the frontier. This gleaming Starfleet ship felt-- sterile. Stagnant. Not-- real.

He actually released a sigh of relief, when he stepped onto the transporter pad.

'Dropping out of warp,' the ensign at the console informed him, not quite in his direction. 'We'll have you to the _USS Knott_ in one minute twenty seconds. Stand ready.'

He shifted the strap of his bag to sit more comfortably on his shoulder. At least back on the _Defiant_ he'd be able to access his own files. The few pads he'd brought along hadn't held his attention at all, last night.

'Thirty seconds,' the ensign told him. 'The Captain sends his regards, sir.'

'My thanks to the Captain.'

The doors slid wide with a muted chirrup. The ensign glanced, then went back to her computer. Julian clenched a fist around his strap.

'Come to see me off?' he asked.

'Not exactly.' Saygee grinned abashedly. 'Actually, I'm to come with you.'

'What?' He didn't mean to say it so flatly, and tempered it with an apologetic wave. 'I didn't receive orders.'

'I did, though. Where did I-- here.' Saygee pulled a pad from his own duffel, and presented it to Julian by stepping onto the pad beside him. Julian registered the name atop the orders, and read no further.

'I think this qualifies as micromanaging.' He handed the pad back. 'Admiral Ya'takhl has never even been out of Federation space.'

A little too tart for his audience. The ensign glared from down-turned eyes. 'Whenever you're ready, sirs.'

'We're ready,' Saygee replied briskly. 'We'll talk about it on board the _Knott_ ,' he added to Julian, who didn't manage the retort he had on his tongue before a blue-tinged sizzle took him over, and his molecules dissolved.

On the _USS Knott_ , they warranted the Second Officer, a handsome Vulcan woman of middle years. But Julian, already distracted by the argument he wanted to have with Saygee, saw who was standing eagerly behind the Vulcan, and all thought of dignity and proper conduct went clear out of his head.

'Kalenna!' He clattered off the transporter pad and grabbed his slender Romulan friend right off her feet, squeezing a breathless laugh from her even as she wrapped her arms about his shoulders in the most enthusiastic display any Romulan was capable of. The Vulcan officer had a raised eyebrow-- two raised eyebrows, and Saygee behind him didn't seem to know what was going on, but Julian paid neither of them the least mind. He let Kalenna back to her feet only reluctantly, pleased beyond words when she immediately seized his hands.

'I haven't seen you in ages, and you still look like you're starving in a Jem'Hadar prison camp,' she chided him. 'I should wrestle you to the nearest replicator and stuff an entire bushel of ossoul twists into your gullet.'

'I might let you,' he laughed. 'That uniform looks horrible on you. Hideous. I can't believe I still haven't convinced you to join Starfleet.'

'And wear these rags?' She plucked the shoulder of his black and grey uniform. 'Perhaps I'll have Garak sew me something plain and simple to wear instead?'

They were both grinning like loons at shared memories when the Vulcan finally had enough. A not-very-subtle cough served as interruption, and then she took a deliberate step toward them. Julian and Kalenna separated like guilty schoolchildren under the teacher's stern gaze.

'I am Lieutenant T'Ren,' the Vulcan informed him. 'Welcome aboard the _USS Knott_ , Doctor Bashir.'

'Thank you.' He inclined his head. 'Forgive my enthusiasm, Lieutenant, but I thank you for the reunion with an old friend.'

T'Ren's expression very clearly announced her doubts that Romulans, especially agents of the Tal Shiar, were capable of friendship. All she said, however, was, 'Quarters have been arranged for you and the Junior Ambassador. If you will please follow me.'

Saygee joined them from the pad as T'Ren blew past the bay doors into the belly of the ship. 'Saygee Dax,' he introduced himself, and received a firm hand press from Kalenna. 'It's a pleasure to meet a Romulan who smiles.'

Kalenna's black eyes sparked at the bold tease. 'And to meet a Trill who dares to express a little genuine curiosity,' she returned. 'I am Commander Kalenna t'Creel. Julian and I spent several weeks together in the Jem'Hadar Internment Camp 371 in the Gamma Quadrant.'

Saygee's confusion cleared. 'I remember,' he said, glancing to Julian for confirmation. 'You'd been replaced by a Changeling. No-one knew until Garak and Worf returned with you and General Martok.'

'Our merry band of heroes,' Julian recalled dryly. Kalenna recaptured his hand, and he squeezed it tight on the unspoken members of that band who hadn't survived. The Breen prisoner who had been shot during their escape, Kalenna's compatriot Ishar. Enabran Tain, who had configured their life-support system into a distress signal, and brought their rescuers in reach too late to save himself.

'Doctor Bashir,' Lieutenant T'Ren called firmly. 'Please follow me.'

They set their feet in motion, leaving the transporter bay behind. Kalenna took his right, Saygee trailing to his left. Kalenna restrained herself now to a wicked smile that lit her plain features with a mischievous light. 'You've been promoted,' she noted.

'As have you, I see. We're finally in a position to do each other some real favours.'

T'Ren glanced back in that instant Vulcan disapproval for anything humourous. Julian didn't mind in the least. 'But why are you here?' he finally thought to ask. 'If you don't mind telling me.'

'I'll be joining you when we meet with the _Defiant_ ,' she said, seriously now. 'There are things going on that involve all of us-- the Federation, the Allies, and the Gamma Quadrant.'

That was another hint toward completing the puzzle. 'I haven't been briefed yet,' Julian admitted.

'And that's the extent of my knowledge, actually. We'll be learning together on your ship.'

The Vulcan delivered them a sharp left and came to a halt in the precise centre of a doorway. 'Your quarters, Ambassador.'

Saygee opened his mouth to speak, but seemed at an uncharacteristic loss for words. He didn't move to enter, even when T'Ren palmed the keypad and the door slid open on a pleasant, large suite with a deep window on the black void of Space.

'Perhaps you'll join Julian and I for dinner tonight,' Kalenna invited him politely. 'My quarters, 1930?'

Saygee nodded. 'Thank you, that would be lovely.' He held Julian's eyes, or tried to; Julian let his dip to Kalenna. Saygee at last went in, and the door closed after him.

'This way, Doctor Bashir,' T'Ren instructed coolly.

His quarters were a bit of a walk past the big, convenient suites for the important guests. Kalenna paced him peaceably, her hands clasped before her, a newly meditative expression on her grey-green face. T'Ren marched them along quickly enough, perhaps offended at the upset to ship protocol, perhaps just ready to get away from Vulcan's ancient enemy, the Romulans who were militantly opposed to their genetic cousins. At least since the war, tensions had cooled on all sides. Once Romulus had acceded to an alliance with the Federation to defeat the Dominion, relations between Romulus and-- everyone else-- had noticeably improved. For the moment. Everyone was waiting to see what would snap first. So far, it had been a quiet three years since the end of the war.

'Your quarters, Doctor,' T'Ren intoned, and keyed open the door for him as well. 'Commander Kalenna, I will escort you if you wish.'

'I'll stay here for the moment. I can find my way back alone, Lieutenant.'

T'Ren inclined her head rather minutely. Kalenna stared her down, something not quite a smirk hovering there on her mouth.

'Behave,' Julian murmured, as T'Ren stalked off icily, leaving them alone. 'She was trying to be nice.'

'Just keeping it interesting,' Kalenna said archly. She touched his arm, smiling fondly at him. 'I'm so very glad to see you again, Julian, even if you are still skinny as a stick.'

'You could stand to gain a little weight yourself,' he retorted, embracing her again, more gently this time. 'I say that as your former doctor and your friend. Come in here and we'll both eat ourselves to death.'

'How are Martok and Worf?' she asked him, as they settled in at his couch beneath his-- fake-- outside window. 'And, of course, the fine Mister Garak.'

'The Chancellor and Worf are in excellent health, running the rest of the Klingons ragged all throughout the Gamma Quadrant. They're chasing down outposts of Jem'Hadar on planets conquered centuries ago. Grim work.'

'Entirely suited to the Klingons, then.'

'I hear of no complaints,' he allowed. 'And Garak is becoming quite a name on Cardassia Prime. He writes, sometimes. Not often enough, but it's still fairly desperate there. They had a bad harvest this past season, even with the soil reclaimators on loan from Bajor.'

'And yet,' Kalenna said, 'peace.' She propped her slim hand to her mouth. 'A new order, indeed.'

'If a human and a Romulan can get along, why not the rest of the universe?'

She grinned briefly. 'Before I met you, I was convinced that all humans were embarrassingly naïve. Now I think you do it just to play with us.'

'That would be telling.' For a moment, though, he thought they both believed it. Those long-ago days in Internment Camp 371 were as immediate to him as her warmth inches away. Kalenna had been among the Romulan fleet destroyed in the Battle of Omarion Nebula, Tain's fatal thrust into the Gamma Quadrant in a futile attempt to destroy the Dominion. Tain's Romulan allies had been infiltrated by a Founder, however, and instead of streaking through the Wormhole straight to the Founder's homeworld with all torpedoes at ready, they'd been met by an overwhelming force of Jem'Hadar. The scant handful of Romulans who had survived had been imprisoned for two full years at the Internment Camp, before Tain's coded message had reached the one being in all the universe who might care enough to try and rescue him. Garak had braved certain capture just to verify that Tain lived. Without Garak, they never would have escaped the Camp. Without Tain, they never would have had Garak. Of course, without Tain, none of them would ever have been there at all.

He'd waked in the Camp on a slab, stacked like wooden board in a room full of like victims. Cardassians, Klingons, even the Breen whose name he'd never known, all of them pinned to scanners that downloaded the entirety of their existence from their unconscious minds in mere minutes. Not even Section 31 had been so chillingly efficient. Disorientated, unbalanced, he'd been shoved into a cell block with Martok, Kalenna, Ishar, and a man he'd never expected to see again: Garak's mentor and tormentor, Tain.

'Doctor Bashir,' Tain had greeted him, ineffably polite behind the doubled chins and weak eyes, somehow daring to be amused by the fates. 'They were most interested in you, Doctor. They've been after you since my first mind-dump. I suppose if I were the apologising type, I'd offer one.'

'You're thinking about it,' Kalenna said softly. 'It was a long time ago, Julian.'

When Tain died, he'd at last believed he would die there, too. He'd been afraid of dying, while there was still a Changeling disguised as him, exposing his friends, all of DS9 to danger.

He exhaled the memories away. 'So you're to come with me,' he said. 'Us. Dax has been ordered along.'

'All I know is that it concerns the Gamma Quadrant,' Kalenna answered. 'But to be very honest, Julian, I think more than that, it concerns you.'

'Me?'

'I wasn't the first candidate to be Romulus' emissary. Senator Cretak was.'

'Cretak?' He hadn't heard her name since the war. She'd been a victim in a plot-- a plot engineered by Section 31 to manipulate them both into doing the right thing at the wrong time. He'd been interrogated by the Tal Shiar, but she'd suffered far more harshly than he had for falling into the ruse. She'd lost her career, her freedom, for a time, her ability to fight in a war she believed in. Julian had only lost his respect for the Federation that had raised him to think citizenship was about obligations owed, not rights selfishly hoarded. The Federation leaders he'd revered had turned on all of it by siding with Section 31. One of them was Vice President now.

He exhaled a poisonous breath. 'Cretak. Because I would trust her? Owe her?'

'So I presume.'

'Should I be wary of you, then?' he asked her bluntly.

Her oval face and dark eyes were solemn. 'Honesty compels me to say-- yes. But out the trust and the debt that I owe to you, Julian, I promise that I will always be that honest in this.'

He curled his fingers in hers. 'It's good to have a friend I can count on.'

 

**

 

'I didn't know you'd stayed in contact with anyone from the prison camp,' Saygee said.

'Just Kalenna, really. Although Chancellor Martok still sends me a case of blood wine every few months.' He hadn't brought any informal clothes when he'd packed for this trip, being technically on duty until the symbiont was reunited with a host. But faced with the likelihood of having to be in uniform for weeks ahead and in the Gamma Quadrant as well, and with Kalenna's arrival considerably lightening his mood, he had decided to use his replicator credits toward a comfortable set for their dinner plans. He'd grown too used to Garak's colourful tastes, though. All the designs in the ship's catalogue were too utilitarian, too identifiably human in origin. Garak, plain and simple tailor extraordinaire, would have turned up his nose in contempt at the lot of them.

'That one,' Saygee said, pointing over his shoulder.

'You really think so? It's a little... loud.'

'You look good in purple. I thought you liked it. You were always wearing that shirt with the collar--'

'Because purple is your favourite colour.' He selected the suit anyway, tired of the search. 'That dress Jadzia used to wear drove me crazy. Ezri... the silk blouse.'

'And the scarf you gave her. The one that felt like a cloud, it was so light.'

The last thing he'd ever bought from Garak's shop, actually. Ezri's mother had probably taken the scarf with her other things. Julian wished he'd thought of it before. He would have liked to keep it.

The replicator brightened to a lengthy hum, and when it faded his suit, neatly folded, lay on the receptor tray. He stepped into his bedroom to change, but the motion sensors over the bedroom door kept it open. On the other side, Saygee spoke through.

'Are we going to talk?' he asked Julian. 'Before we go to your friend's.'

He took the time to think through his answer, as he fastened the cuffs and checked his presentation in the bath mirror. 'What is there to say?' he answered finally. 'You have your orders, same as me.'

'I didn't seek it out. I mean, I didn't ask to go just because you were going. I didn't know until just an hour before.' Saygee waited a long time for his response, though Julian provided none. 'Do you believe me?'

Did he? He wasn't entirely sure. Those questions about Jack, Patrick, and Lauren, those hadn't been out of the blue. Vice President Ross wasn't involved by coincidence. Section 31 had taught Julian to suspect anything that even smelled of coincidence.

'Julian?' Saygee stepped, uninvited, into his bedroom. Sombre in a navy coat that didn't suit him, very convincing wrinkles of worry between his contracted brows. He was unhappy.

Not four hours ago, Kalenna had done him the honour and the courtesy of offering him honesty. Julian did no less now. 'I would like to believe you,' he said candidly. 'I don't know yet if I can.'

'You trusted Jadzia and Ezri,' Saygee said.

'They never lied to me. Not once.'

'Jadzia told you Trill don't bother with love.'

There was more to that than a spiteful repudiation. Or at least it seemed so, Saygee staring at him so intently. He didn't know what it meant, though.

'She said Trill don't look for romance the same way humans do,' he corrected. 'She meant casual affairs. Which was true, wasn't it?'

Saygee looked aside. 'We'll be late,' he said tonelessly.

Kalenna had laid out a meal for them that surely used up most of her replicator credits as well. The many dishes were, diplomatically, a mix of human, Trill, and Romulan treats. Kalenna had also dressed for the occasion, though the stiff shoulders of her dark green tunic still resembled the uniform she had worn in all the time he'd known her. But she greeted them warmly, accepting Julian's offer of a spring wine that would be amenable to all of them with evident pleasure.

'There was a time when I had almost forgotten what real food tasted like,' she told Saygee, gesturing them into their seats. 'The Dominion fed us a sort of nutrient mush--'

'I'm not sure it was entirely nutritious,' Julian added. 'In fact I'm fairly sure it was designed to keep us malnourished, so we wouldn't have enough energy to openly resist. But it was the taste I really couldn't get past--'

'What taste?' Kalenna grinned at him. 'Hand over your glasses. I feel the need to toast to yet another day of freedom from that place.'

'I've never heard you talk so much about it there,' Saygee said.

'I suppose I don't.' Julian accepted back a full flute of wine. 'It was... very strange, coming back and realising that I truly hadn't been missed by anyone. In some ways it made it feel like it had never happened. Or at least it wasn't anything I could share with anyone at DS9. Miles even joked that the Changeling had been easier to be around than the real me. It was all in good fun, but it made it hard to speak seriously about our experience.'

'I talked to Worf about it,' Saygee said, an odd defencive note in his voice, a frown etching his mouth down.

Julian pursed his lips over a sip of cool dandelion-tasting wine. 'Jadzia did, you mean.'

Saygee blinked. 'Yes,' he agreed, a short pause later. 'I meant Jadzia.'

'I don't know this Jadzia,' Kalenna interposed cautiously, 'but I have to remind you that Worf and Garak were only at the Camp a matter of days. Even Julian's imprisonment was a trifle compared to the years that the Romulan prisoners were detained there, and there were some who had been there decades before us. All Jem'Hadar camps have been in operation for centuries. Their methods don't change. Everything there is meant to brutalise prisoners to the point where even the thought of escape is impossible. Tain's plan was all the more remarkable because of those very circumstances.'

'I understand that.' Saygee managed a reasonably smooth recovery. 'I'm a recently Joined Trill,' he explained forthrightly. 'My previous hosts were stationed on Deep Space Nine with Julian. Sometimes it's difficult to sort out what they knew and what I know.'

'Ah.' Kalenna's slight frown cleared. 'I have limited experience with Trills, but I've heard of the Joining. It sounds fascinating.'

'And surprising,' Saygee said wryly. 'You know, I apologise, but I think I'm going to go back to my quarters for the night. We're not likely to have a lot of privacy in the upcoming days. You should take this time alone together while you can.' He rose. 'Thank you, Kalenna, for your hospitality.'

She rose, as well, Julian slowly mimicking her. 'You are welcome to stay,' she said.

Saygee smiled. 'I make it a policy not to stand between old friends. Enjoy your evening.'

'How odd,' Kalenna said, as the door slid closed at Saygee's exit. 'You say you've known his previous hosts?'

'Yes. I knew them both very well.'

'Odd,' she repeated, sinking back into her chair. 'If he were a Romulan, I would have said...'

Julian sat as well, settling his napkin in his lap. 'Would have said?'

Her teeth showed again in a grin. 'That he was jealous of us.'

'If he were human, I would have said that too.' He took a generous swallow of his wine. 'But he's Trill, and, as he said, I think he's confusing some of his past hosts' memories. I have no idea what was behind that.'

'I'll admit to one thing. I am glad to have you to myself.' She covered his hand. 'Well, if we're not impressing the Ambassador-- shall we adjourn to the couch and make the most of this feast?'

He grinned himself, absolutely at peace for the first time in weeks. 'Let's,' he said firmly. He raised his glass to clink with hers. 'To the presence of plenty and good friends to gorge on it with.'

'Here here,' she agreed.


	4. Three

Prynn Tenmei greeted them as they transported onto the _Defiant_. Her solemn expression didn't vary even at being reunited with her crewmember; and if she knew who Saygee was, it didn't show.

'Commander Vaughn wants you in the War Room,' she said only. 'I'll handle your luggage.'

Julian passed his bag, as did his companions. 'This way,' he murmured to them, and stepped off the pad into a familiar world as if no time had passed at all.

Not quite four weeks, actually. Not quite four weeks since Ezri had died in his Sickbay, two decks down. He'd been removing the Dax symbiont when her heart stopped. He hadn't done the autopsy that would definitively decide if he had killed her, doing that, or if it was the burns. A glance at Saygee's pale face provided no answers. The delicate fade of his spots seemed like artwork, bold even in the flashing safety lights that led them onward.

Even without the muted alarums, he knew by the hum of energy all around him that the _Defiant_ was in full battle mode. The other two, not possessed of his enhanced sensibilities, might not have felt what he did-- a sort of sizzle in the air, and a quiver that reached through even the rubber soles of his shoes. More, there was no casual traffic in the corridors, which meant lock-down. They passed no-one as they descended to Deck Two by lift, and emerged at their destination. Anticipating security measures, he went to the palm-press stationed beside the imposing War Room doors. He laid his hand over the cool plastic pad, and a moment later, accepting his identification, the computer released a grating beep. The doors opened on his crew.

No-one seated at the large conference table within rose to greet them. But Vaughn, sitting head of the table, framed by a glowing three-dimensional image of an unknown station on the comm-screen, stopped mid-sentence. His short white hair was raggedly disarranged, as if he'd been pulling at it-- or sleeping in snatches, unwilling to give up his command during an emergency. Julian noted more than a few drained faces and blood-shot eyes amongst his fellow officers. Nog was the worst, barely keeping his eyes open as he slumped over a pile of PADDs. He was also sporting a large rust-coloured bruise on his left lobe, inexpertly patched by a dermal regenerator.

'Bashir,' Julian said, 'reporting for duty. Commander, may I present Ambassador Dax and Commander Kalenna t'Creel.'

At that, Vaughn finally stood, tugging the hem of his uniform jacket into strict conformance. 'Welcome aboard,' he said shortly. 'Forgive me, but we'll save the formal meet-and-greet for another time. If you'll take a seat, we'll bring you up to speed with the latest developments.'

Julian eased into a leather-covered chair between Nog and Ro, who nodded quiet acknowledgment. Kalenna, ranking even with Vaughn through the twists and turns of their respective organisations, took the chair opposite the Commander. Dax, rather overlooked and perhaps overwhelmed by the presence of so many people familiar to Ezri's short years with them, sat meekly beside Shar, an empty chair to his right. Not Ezri's accustomed place at Vaughn's side. That spot, Julian was mollified to see, was unoccupied. Beside him, Nog noticeably relaxed when Saygee chose not to take it. More interestingly, Sam Bowers, Vaughn's unofficial protogé and not a man Julian would have described as being especially close to Ezri, struggled to hide a look of patent relief, his fists clenching white-knuckled. The doctor in Julian noted the other signs of physical distress-- slight sheen of sweat on the upper lip, the pulse accelerating and then slowing, shallow breaths that deepened on a rush. Interesting.

Most interesting of all-- the presence of almost the entire senior staff of DS9 on the _Defiant_ meant that the station was all but unmanned. No wonder Sisko had been on DS9 when he'd called. Kira had called in help.

Vaughn nodded once, internal confirmation that all was ready. He said, 'Six days ago, the colonists of New Bajor were attacked by three Cardassian warships.'

Julian, even braced for bad news, still felt a shock ripple through him. 'That's impossible,' he said sharply.

'In our initial assessment, we agreed.' Vaughn smoothed his grey beard over his chin. 'Close examination of weapons discharge confirms at least the use of Cardassian phaser arrays. Sensor logs from the colony defence network confirm forensic signature.'

'And who exactly is left to fly those ships? For that matter, who was there to rebuild them? The Dominion destroyed almost the entire Cardassian fleet--'

'Almost,' Ro repeated. 'Not the outlying ships that weren't in-system.'

'The Civilian Council would never authorise ship repair ahead of the needs of a hungry population.'

'Wouldn't they?' Kalenna answered. The bony vee of her forehead protrusions cast ominous shadows over her eyes. It was the Tal Shiar officer who spoke that, the secret policeman of an empire that thrived precisely because it would do exactly that-- ensure the survival of mobile militant space capacity, even if their people went hungry for it.

Julian let that pass, reluctantly turning back to Vaughn. 'What else?'

'Cardassians in the Gamma Quadrant is quite enough, but you're right. Not enough to recall you in particular, and to invite our guests.' Vaughn stiffly inclined his head to both Kalenna and Saygee. 'The _Defiant_ traced these Cardassians deeper into the Gamma Quadrant, not back into Alpha space. We discovered a hidden base on an N-Class planet in an unoccupied system. Three warships is the tip of the iceberg. From the look of things, there's been an outpost there for years. And they've been busy. Nog, bring up the sensor logs.'

Julian sat forward as Nog stood to change the screen. At extreme magnification through the thick clouds of a gaseous atmosphere, Julian could just make out a surface topology that looked distinctly man-made. Box-shaped structures, edges just barely visible, and there, a series of dot-like circles-- bio-domes, just like the one he and Kalenna had occupied at the Jem'Hadar prison camp.

'Not Cardassian,' he said immediately. 'That's a favourite Dominion strategy. The domes support humanoid life indefinitely, via self-replicating support systems.'

'It may have begun as a Dominion outpost, but we only picked up Cardassian life-signs,' Shar offered diffidently. 'Approximately 2300, in fact. More than enough to outfit a minimum of fifty Galor-class warships.'

'At full ship capacity it might be only seven,' Julian corrected. 'Four, if those are Keldon-class ships with a capacity for five hundred crew.'

'You're assuming ground troops?' Saygee interrupted. His brown eyes were mild as his tone, but there was something about the way he'd snapped out the question that almost, for a second, made him forget it wasn't Ezri.

'Not assuming,' he said curtly. 'Just pointing out. For all we know it's not a military post at all. They could be survivors, they could be a secret colonisation attempt. They could even just be explorers, using the only ships available. Long-range sensors on a Keldon-class would be more than sufficient to search for usable resources on an unoccupied planet. For all we know they just took advantage of an available, empty Dominion bio-dome as a halfway point. Yes, it would violate the Treaty, but would that really surprise anyone?'

'Not me,' Vaughn said. 'But I'm afraid we're past the point of giving the Cardassians the benefit of our doubts. We were fired upon, and in the course of a prudent retreat, we discovered something else. We followed a Federation distress signal to a disabled runabout. The runabout was thought to have gone down with the _Serajevo_ five years ago. The passenger-- was not.'

Any one of innumerable options spelt disaster. Dozens occurred all at once, starting with the recent enemies-- parasites, Changelings-- ranging to less dangerous but still controversial-- the Eav'oq, Garak's Oralian followers, if they were dealing with Cardassians-- any of a thousand conquered worlds who might want revenge on their former overlords at a time when the Founders were most vulnerable--

And then, somehow, he knew who it was. Too many clues had been strewn in his path to be willfully ignored. He knew why he'd been recalled, why the Tal Shiar had sent a representative, why Saygee had suddenly been shackled to his side.

'Section 31,' he said.

Vaughn nodded slowly. 'I'm very much afraid so, Julian.'

 

**

 

The man in the _Defiant_ 's undersized little brig smiled affably as they entered, piling through the doorway. Julian, in the lead, came to a halt precisely halfway between forcefield ahead and escape behind, crossing his arms over his chest on a slow considering inhale.

'You don't seem surprised to see me, Doctor,' the prisoner said.

'Oh, I am,' Julian answered amiably. 'After all, I killed you.'

Sloan's eyes dipped in entirely false modesty. 'You certainly killed somebody, Doctor Bashir. But don't be too hard on yourself. You and I have always been... adversarial.'

'Then this is the Sloan in all of your reports,' Vaughn questioned softly, stepping beside Julian. 'Your contact in Thirty-One.'

'Most likely a clone,' Julian guessed. 'No self-respecting Founder would impersonate the human who tried to destroy their entire species.'

'Not from any personal animus.' Sloan rose, stretching to his full, if not imposing, height, slipping his hands with studied casualness into the pockets of his studiously unremarkable clothes. He wore his most pleasant smile, the one he'd had on as he died in Julian's infirmary, doing his damnedest to take Julian with him. 'The Founders, I believe we can all agree, would never have stopped without the threat of personal annihilation. I believe our actions saved-- well, civilisation as we know it.'

'Odo's actions,' Julian snapped, dropping his pose as the ugly old anger flared in him. 'He arranged a peaceful surrender when all the reaches of your imagination could only produce genocide. In spite of your efforts, the Federation survived.'

Sloan's teeth bared, momentarily, but in what seemed to be genuine amusement. 'My favourite idealist,' he told Vaughn. 'It's charming, isn't it? This eternal determination to believe the best in everyone. Except for me, of course.'

'I've just met you and I already don't like you,' said Ro from the door. Her hand was clenched grimly around her phaser in her belt.

'Shall we cut through the chatter?' Vaughn asked. 'You've been waiting for Bashir. Tell him whatever it is you're out here to tell him.'

Sloan's pockmarked cheeks dimpled in a grin. He rocked on his heels, entirely at his ease. He searched the faces of the others behind Julian, displaying no indication that he was unfamiliar with them. But he refrained from any further comments, archly returning his gaze to Julian as if to say-- the game begins again.

'Cole reported well of your mission on Sindorin.'

'As damn well he should. He got everything he wanted.'

'Of course. You do deliver, Doctor. Which is why this charade of refusing to officially join Section 31 is all the more a sham.'

'I will die,' Julian grated. 'Before I ever even dream of joining you.'

It was further than he'd meant to go. It made Vaughn look at him keenly. It took Sloan aback, too; the agent studied him more closely, a faint frown creasing his mouth. Julian locked his jaws, too late.

'That's a little something more than your usual moral outrage,' Sloan noted quietly. 'Was what happened on Sindorin really so terrible?'

Yes. Yes, it had been. Confronting his own darkest possibilities in Ethan Locken, another genetic mutant who embodied and justified every fear the Federation had of the enhanced. Locken had created an army of Jem'Hadar to be his loyal slaves and had planned in bloody detail to wipe out every race he found offencive-- and there hadn't been any he didn't find offencive. Locken had been unquestionably mad, and Julian had, with time, reconciled that it was extremely unlikely that if he'd survived there would have been a way to cure him. Whether the madness had been ambition, trauma, bloodlust, arrogance-- whether it had been some terrible side effect of the enhancements that had made him, like Julian, a brilliant doctor, it didn't matter. Locken and the threat he represented were dead. What had mattered was that Julian had been asked, convinced, to turn on someone who was essentially the same as he. He had betrayed Locken to destroy him, and even if it had been needful, even if it had been just, the fact was that he'd voluntarily appointed himself a hunter of his own kind.

He forced himself to turn to Vaughn. 'There's nothing more to say here,' he said. 'Space him.'

'I'm hurt, Doctor.' Sloan sighed at his back. 'And saddened, though I'm sure you won't believe me, to hear this new cynicism. Cole's methods have always been direct to the point of indiscretion. I'm deeply sorry to see that it's affected you so much. I would hope it would only underscore for you the importance I have placed all these years on having you with Section 31. We need good men. We need uncompromised men who still know right from wrong.'

Vaughn searched his face. Not as a friend; as a commander, evaluating the fitness of his crewman. Julian wished the outlook were less bleak. He wouldn't have proceeded with himself. But himself was all Vaughn had, and Vaughn had been after Section 31 since before Julian had been born, much less enhanced. There was a fire in his face that wasn't going to be quenched even by Julian's disappointing lack of resilience. If Julian didn't have it in him, that look said, he'd better find it somewhere he could borrow it, and fast.

'Doctor,' Sloan said. 'Perhaps we could speak privately.'

'No.' He breathed. It was the first step. Turning back was the next. Straightening his spine. Reminding himself-- this was part of the plan. Section 31 would never leave him be. He had to make them. And he'd always known the time wouldn't be of his choosing.

'No,' he said again. 'It might be refreshing to see you try to justify yourself in the broad light of day. They stay, and so do you.'

'Very well.' Sloan removed his hands from his pockets, linking them behind his back as he struck a pose of parade rest. 'Your crew have already discovered the Cardassian outpost.'

'Yes,' Vaughn admitted cautiously. 'What does Section 31 have to do with it?'

'Absolutely nothing. For the moment.' Sloan inclined his head to Julian. 'However, you're about to become very well acquainted with it. You're going to take my place in the disabled runabout, Doctor. The Cardassians-- or whoever they are-- are going to notice that distress call when you rig it to penetrate the ionosphere of their planet. They'll likely take you prisoner, as you, Commander Vaughn, have been so kind as to do with me. Once you're in the compound, you will find out what you can about their activity, escape, and turn over a report to me.'

'That's it?' Vaughn interrupted. He looked incredulously at Julian. 'I thought they usually gave you more information than that.'

'They do.' Julian hid an uneasy frown. But perhaps Sloan-- Thirty-One-- was getting impatient with the 'charade'. Pretending still to be recruiting him, just to cater to his sensibilities. 'It's been, what, five years since you first approached me?'

'I believe so,' Sloan replied.

'And I've fought you every time you came anywhere near me. Even when I did what you wanted, you had to waste time cajoling, threatening-- tricking me... No operative causing so much trouble is worth the return, not when you have dozens of men and women who would gladly throw their lives away for you.'

'For the Federation.' The pretty smiles were gone now. For maybe the first time, Julian thought he was getting an honest reaction out of Sloan. No more lies, no more stories, no good-man flattery.

He stepped in toward the forcefield that separated them. 'We've never discussed the ultimate consequences of disobedience.'

'We never had to before.' Sloan released a harsh exhale. 'I've put a great deal of time into this relationship you and I share, yes. I always thought the balance came to our favour. But we do not allow members of this organisation to walk away, Julian. I told you that from the beginning. I'm willing to let your contributions be occasional, when we need your unique talents. But you will help us. There are consequences.'

'Such as sending me into the field with no details, no cover, and no help.' Another step put his toe at the vibrating metal casement of the brig. Nose to nose with the man inside it, the static charge of the forcefield raising the hairs on his neck, he said, 'Cole let me take a team.'

'I am not Cole.'

'And if I should die? What happens to the balance then?'

'It begins anew. With someone else.'

'You're running out of Ethan Lockens.'

'There are a thousand Ethan Lockens in this sector alone,' Sloan dismissed his sally contemptuously. 'A million Ethan Lockens to every one Julian Bashir. Doctor, do you know why you fight me every time we meet? Have you ever really admitted this to yourself? You come around every single time for exactly the same reason.'

'And what is that?'

Sloan closed the last milimetres between them. 'Because as long as you're useful to us, the Federation has a reason to keep you free.'

He went still as stone, so stunned that his heart actually stopped for a moment. Then pounded double-time, the rush of blood deafening him. His hands went numb, then tingled. He couldn't dare breathe.

'You're wrong.' It was Dax, coming to his shoulder, his rescue, speaking with an absolute conviction that rang horribly hollow for all its surety. 'The Federation dreams of officers like Julian,' Dax told Sloan. 'Men of honour and principle who make the right choice because they believe in justice.'

Sloan leant back. 'I don't disagree with that assessment, Ambassador. I simply question whether Julian believes--'

'That my history of lying to Starfleet outweighs a decade of service.' He could barely manage a whisper, his throat was so tight. He swallowed dryly. 'Whether my history of questionable decisions outweigh my loyalties. Everything you accused me of before you invited me to join Section 31.'

Dax rallied quickly, gripping his arm and physically turning him. 'Don't let him rewrite that history,' Saygee said intently. 'Do you remember what happened when it got out you were enhanced? Your father struck an almost ridiculously light sentence and you kept your commission. And it was more than a year later that Section 31 approached you. We don't live in the age of Khan Noonien Singh and the Eugenics Wars any more. Even Ethan Locken couldn't bring that back.'

But it wouldn't have lasted forever. He'd known. He'd felt it-- then-- the weight of silent censure, those few patients who had started asking for Doctor Girani instead of him, the way his presence at senior staff meetings became less and less frequent, the increasingly snide comments about his unnatural dexterity, his unnatural intelligence, his unnatural advantage. The days when his medical license had protected him when speaking truth to authority had vanished. First Sisko, then Ross, even sometimes Jadzia and Ezri-- he'd seen the subtle growth of a new hostility to his opinions. Even his greatest accomplishments as a doctor were mooted by the enhancements that had enabled him to reach them; fellow soldiers in the war had likened him to a Jem'Hadar, and trusted him just as much. His very presence was a threat. And that history of questionable decisions-- every charge Sloan had once brought against him was true. His case for Julian's supposed espionage had been wrong, but not the underlying theme of Julian's essential unsuitability for the black-and-white world of Starfleet, where orders were given to be obeyed and moral ambiguities weren't supposed to exist. Where he wasn't supposed to exist. He'd known. He'd always been waiting for it. It was why he'd lied about his enhancements his entire life. There were those in Starfleet Command who believed his father's sentence had been too light by half, those in Starfleet Medical who openly questioned his right to practise when the very course of his life advocated for illegal, dangerous, even immoral medicine. They said he proved to all the desperate and the greedy that the risk of DNA resequencing could be rewarded. His story encouraged more parents just like his own to take a quiet step outside Federation law and subject more deficient children, just like he had been, to drastic measures that produced far more monsters than angels. He could be better only if no-one else believed he was.

Sloan let his silence stretch to a full minute before he broke it. 'Are we agreed, Doctor? To the mission?'

It was all he could do to nod his head. Dax squeezed his arm hard enough to hurt, then abruptly let him go.

Sloan accepted his acquiescence with straightening shoulders, a deep inhale, and a return of the bright-eyed smile. 'Excellent,' he said. 'Good luck, though I don't think you'll need it. I'll find you when you're done.' He stepped back from the forcefield, and a moment later, he vanished in the beam of a transporter.

'How can he beam out behind shields and a cloak?' Kalenna demanded, wide-eyed as she reached for a weapon she wasn't wearing.

'They have the tech,' Ro answered her heavily. 'And we won't be able to find where he beamed to, either. They've beamed on and off DS9, star ships, and even Romulus, all without leaving a trace.'

Vaughn slapped his comm badge. 'Nog,' he called.

 _'Yes, Commander?'_ a tinny voice answered.

'Make sure the captured runabout is in good shape. It's going to be launching soon.'

_'Yes, sir.'_

'So that was Sloan.' Kalenna was at her most thoughtful, gazing into the now conspicuously empty cell. 'Interesting,' she said. She met Julian's eyes. 'It seems he has many lives. The Tal Shiar have killed him as well.'

'And, no doubt, that honour has gone to a fistful of other vindicated species.' Vaughn's frown was drawn with heavy lines. 'Thirty-One have been a thorn for centuries, candidly speaking. But I think we have got an advantage in a more than tacit acknowledgment of it. Commander, Ambassador, I imagine you have questions. I think it's time to provide some answers. We have official sanction to disclose everything we know-- off the record.'

Dax stirred from his position facing the wall. 'Whose sanction,' he asked. 'Out of curiosity.'

'The Vice-President.'

Ross. It gave that official sanction a good deal less legitimacy, as far as Julian was concerned. He never liked to hear his superior's name too often in one setting, even when Section 31 were light-years away.

'Julian,' Vaughn added then. 'I think this story has to begin with you.'

 

The War Room felt threateningly empty, with only the five of them in it. Ro looked almost funereal, her mouth a thin slash in her pale face. Kalenna had retreated into a thoughtful silence, perhaps squaring Julian her friend with Julian the sometimes-secret-agent. Saygee and Vaughn were both practising a diplomat's reserved silence, and Julian didn't have it in him to try and read microexpressions that wouldn't tell him anything he didn't already know.

He said, 'Five years ago I was leaving Deep Space Nine to attend a medical conference on Casperia Prime. I went to bed as I normally would, and woke feeling exhausted. As I was packing I was called to Ops, where we were met by Starfleet Internal Affairs. We were told all senior staff would be sequestered as Internal Affairs questioned us about a possible intelligence leak. The man leading the interrogations was Luther Sloan, whom you've all just seen in the flesh. At first the questions were routine, even pleasant. Then I was accused of being a Dominion spy. Sloan's theory was particularly neat, particularly plausible. He believed that during my time in Internment Camp 371, I was deliberately secluded in Solitary for the purpose of being introduced to the Vorta Weyoun, the Founders' chief advisor. He believed that Weyoun convinced me that by turning traitor to the Federation and supplying information about Starfleet's plans, I could ultimately save millions, if not billions, of lives that would otherwise be lost in a bitter war. More than that, Sloan believed that the anguish of this betrayal caused me to suffer engrammatic disassociation-- a condition that allowed my usual personality to function as normal, while sublimating my surface awareness of any espionage activity.

'I couldn't offer any proof that this wasn't true,' he said flatly. 'I was arrested and imprisoned. I was then beamed off the station onto a Dominion ship, 'rescued' by Weyoun himself, who validated all of Sloan's theories. He confirmed I had been spying for him, and tried to force me to access these repressed memories to debrief me. I denied it. I was then 'rescued' again, by the crew of Deep Space Nine. They had ceased to believe my protestations of innocence in the face of all the evidence. I tried them one by one, to make them believe me. None of them would. Even my closest friend, Miles O'Brien, turned his back to me. I was furious. I grabbed him by the shoulder, and he shook me off. Which should have been impossible. He'd dislocated his shoulder only that morning, and I'd re-set it myself. He couldn't be the real Miles O'Brien. And if he wasn't real, then none of the rest of it could be real.'

He paused to sip the water he'd poured himself, only to give himself time to choose the right words. Telling that part of the story was easy. But from that simple narrative to the mess it had blossomed into...

'If Miles wasn't real, then none of it was real,' he said. 'And in fact it wasn't. It was a holoprogramme, created by the real Luther Sloan. He was, as we know now, an agent of an organisation he called Section 31. They identify themselves as a chartered arm of the paramilitary, dating to the origin of the Federation. They “deal with threats”, he said. I had somehow been identified as a threat. They'd kidnapped me from DS9, beaming me out asleep without setting off a single alarm. They measured my reaction to their programme through a neural implant-- a sort of lie detector meant to determine my innocence or guilt. I passed. And in reward, Sloan offered me membership. He asked me how many lives I thought I'd saved, as a doctor. He asked me if I thought any of them cared whether I'd lied about my genetic enhancements to get into Starfleet Medical, or if they were only grateful for the result. He likened it to his work in Section 31. He said, If you knew how many lives we've saved, I think you'd agree the ends do justify the means. It seems to be the central tenet of Section 31's mission. They're willing to sacrifice any and every principle espoused by the Federation, if they think they're serving the greater good.'

'But you didn't join them,' Kalenna asked cautiously.

'I refused. I was sedated and returned to DS9. But-- I disclosed everything to Captain Sisko. He asked for answers in Starfleet Command, and they were... not forthcoming. So he ordered me to accept Thirty-One's proposal the next time they came after me. He wanted me to spy on them from the inside.'

That was more than he'd ever revealed to Ezri or Ro, who had accompanied him on his last mission for Section 31. Saygee knew what had happened with Ethan Locken, but perhaps comprehended a bit more of the backstory now. Kalenna seemed to be taking it as the truth-- but then, Romulan secret police were hardly secret, and she outranked military generals and, sometimes, even the Senate, by virtue of the insignia on her uniform. Perhaps she thought it odd or even laughable that the Federation chose to hide its enforcers from the population, chose to fool itself that it didn't need such agents. Julian had had plenty of cause to wish he was still one of those fools.

Vaughn took over quietly. 'Doctor Bashir has since performed two missions for Section 31. Attending a conference between the Allies held on Romulus, he was instructed by Sloan to covertly determine if Koval, then head of the Tal Shiar, suffered from Tuvan Syndrome. The upshot of that adventure was to remove Senator Cretak from achieving a seat on the Continuing Committee, in the belief that Cretak's patriotism would eventually lead her to advocate breaking from the Federation when the Alliance was no longer profitable to Romulus.' Vaughn inclined his head to Kalenna, who returned the gesture with a solemn nod. 'As you noted, Commander, Sloan was in attendance to draw attention away from Doctor Bashir, and played out a pantomime in which it seemed he was killed. Unfortunately, he survived.

'The doctor's next encounter with Sloan concerned the virus which affected all the Founders and eventually led to their surrender. Doctor Bashir was conducting research to effect a cure for Odo, the only Changeling friendly to the Federation. He discovered that the virus had actually been inflicted as a biogenic weapon against the Founders. Believing the Jem'Hadar and the Cardassians would fall back without leadership, Thirty-One was happy to orchestrate a genocide. Doctor Bashir sent a false message to Starfleet Command informing them that he had actually found a cure. This lured Sloan to Deep Space Nine to destroy Julian's research. Julian managed to capture Sloan, but rather than be interrogated, Sloan committed suicide. The doctor enacted life-saving measures and managed to keep Sloan alive long enough to employ an optronic engrammatic interpreter to 'infiltrate' Sloan's mind. He retrieved the chemical composition of the antivirus, but Sloan died-- or seemed to.'

'When Thirty-One approached me again, it was a new agent, Cole,' Julian continued. He gazed down at his hand on the tabletop, brown against the sleek black glass. 'Cole picked up right where Sloan left off. He wanted me to clean up one of their messes-- proof, at least, that they do make mistakes. Apparently after I killed Sloan, they tried to pick up a new genetically enhanced human, Ethan Locken. They arranged for him to witness a massacre of a colony by Jem'Hadar, effectively traumatising him into a revenge-driven zealot, and recruited him to their cause. There was a time when he was-- a good man.' Saygee-- Ezri within Saygee-- was looking at him, sympathy in those dark brown eyes, but not agreement. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. He cleared his throat. 'They'd sent Locken to the planet Sindorin to reclaim a Jem'Hadar hatchery that had been abandoned after the war. Locken turned on Thirty-One, however. He produced some two hundred Jem'Hadar, but taught them to revere him as a god. They eventually killed him themselves. The greater threat was a weapon he'd designed, another biological. He intended to wipe out the Alpha Quadrant, to start. I hacked his launch codes in time to redirect the missile, and it exploded harmlessly in Space. Whether Thirty-One recovered all of his research, I don't know. We tried to destroy what we could. But, as you've seen, Section 31 has access to technology of much greater sophistication than anything currently available to us.'

'We?' Kalenna asked only.

'Myself, Lieutenant Ro, and Lieutenant Ezri Dax, as well as a Jem'Hadar, Taran'atar, who resides on DS9 as a sort of liaison to the Federation. Taran'atar turned the Jem'Hadar on Locken.' He flattened his hand on the table. 'There's more, but you have the gist of it. Section 31 will stop at nothing, but I did learn one valuable thing in the Locken incident. Cole informed me, and I believe, that there is no one agent of Section 31 who knows everything the organisation does. It diffuses the possibility of any captured agent revealing too much, and it very handily diffuses any individual responsibility their agents may feel for the damage they do. But I believe Cole only sought me out because he thought Sloan was dead. Which suggests to me now that Sloan may be operating alone, very alone, to accomplish whatever it is he wants accomplished at that Cardassian base. It would be interesting to know whether anyone in Section 31 even knows he's alive.'

'We can't rely on that supposition until we have proof.' Vaughn sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his bearded chin. 'Although it seems to me we're pretty short on proof, right now. All we have proof of, really, is that Sloan wants something from you again. Which means we have one more opportunity to expose Thirty-One.'

'Expose them,' Kalenna echoed. 'Why?'

'They are an evil,' Vaughn told her shortly. 'We could argue all day whether their “protection” has benefited the Federation or not, up to and including getting Koval on the Continuing Committee to uphold the alliance between our peoples. But I believe to my soul that as long as Section 31 is responsible to no-one but themselves, we're in far greater danger from them than we are from any of our enemies.'

'Even the Tal Shiar report in,' Ro pointed out. 'Even the Obsidian Order had a structure of command. Section 31 calls itself an organisation, but it's more like the Bajoran Resistance or the Maquis were-- independent cells operating alone toward their goal. But the danger is that any one cell can trigger a backlash against everyone caught in the middle. In this case, the Federation. The Allies. The Alpha Quadrant.'

'Or Doctor Bashir,' Saygee added. 'This mission seems to be about punishment as much as spying. It's far too dangerous to try and infiltrate that base alone, without the least idea what you can expect. Assuming you even survive long enough to try.'

'I agree.' Vaughn rubbed wearily at his cheeks, achieving a momentary flush of colour. 'And I'm not risking you, Julian. Sloan or no Sloan, you're not going in alone.'

Julian had no intention of protesting that. 'I'm glad to hear it,' he said honestly. 'Who, then?'

'I believe you're looking at your new team.' Kalenna was amused, suddenly, her lips pursing in a pert smile. 'It will be just like old times. What's another few days in a Dominion prison, when we so enjoyed our last stay?'

'And I suppose I'll finally be seeing it for myself,' Saygee said.

'I don't think an Ambassador will be much help down there,' Ro said, eyebrows raised.

'You never know. Cardassians do adore pretending to negotiate.'

'Admiral Ya'takhl agrees,' Vaughn told her. 'And if worse does come to worse, Dax has three hundred years combined experience to fall back on.' For the first time, Vaughn's steady eyes seemed to acknowledge his former Second Officer. Saygee's tiny, warm smile thanked him silently. Whatever difficulty Vaughn had maintaining that confidence, it didn't show. But he didn't linger at it, either. 'The _Defiant_ will stay in the area, cloaked,' he told them all. 'We'll monitor as much as we can, but it probably won't be much. The best we can promise is a ready get-away ride, when you signal us.'

'Nog has designed a concealable transmitter,' Ro said. She slid a paper envelope across the table; Julian stopped it with a fingertip, and emptied it over his palm. A tooth cap-- gold. Nog had been spending too much time on old Earth novels. 'It will emit until you chomp down on it. When we stop getting the signal, we'll get you out of there.'

'Simple enough,' Julian agreed. If not a little too simple. Consequences. There were a few too many odds to calculate, even for the genetically enhanced.

His thoughts scattered. He deliberately did not chase them. He said, 'I suppose I'm ready then, sir,' and took Vaughn's implacable stare as final benediction.


	5. Four

The War Room was empty now, but it gave him silence, and access to the stars. Not that there were any in view of the _Defiant_ 's aft window, and at warp speed there were not even streaks of fading light to see; but he knew they were out there. He felt closer to them, with only clear window between himself and Space.

He seemed to have slipped company for the moment. He needed it, to think. Nothing he could do about Sloan, and it wasn't Section 31 that held him in this suspension of uncertainty now. Well-- not entirely.

They'd chosen him to go. Which meant he'd be called to do something only a genetically advanced man could do. Sloan wouldn't waste him on anything less. Sloan surely knew exactly what was going on in that Cardassian base. He knew exactly what it was... and expected Julian to react to it a certain way, just as he'd done on Romulus, thus providing Sloan the solution he really wanted. And Julian couldn't honestly say that Sloan had ever failed to predict him. In fact, knowing now that Sloan had survived when Julian had been literally inside his mind as brain death occurred, he had to wonder if Sloan had really even been there to stop him from finding the cure. It had seemed unusually direct, Sloan himself showing up, falling so easily into Julian's trap-- giving up without a real fight. Even uncovering the formula for the cure had been a sign of something wrong. Something he'd never included in a report, which Sloan might also know.

Why make a cure for a disease that can only infect the enemy?

You would only do that if you wanted it to fail. And to speed that failure along, you might go so far as to put yourself in the path of someone desperate enough to take extreme measures to pry it out of you-- even as you were dying.

Julian rather suspected now that the Sloan he had killed had been the clone, not the man he'd spoke to only an hour ago. No clone was a psychological copy of the original, only a physical replica. Sloan wouldn't risk leaving precious Thirty-One in the fragile hands of a being that might, God forbid, not be every iota as dedicated to his goals as he himself was.

But knowing the hows didn't give Julian the whys. It didn't predict what he'd have to do down there. It didn't predict whether he was endangering Kalenna and Saygee, bringing them into it blind.

He wasn't going to find out by staring out at Space. Even if he'd trade his left arm for higher odds.

He tapped his combadge. 'Bashir to Bowers,' he called.

The lieutenant answered promptly. _'Bowers here. What can I do for you, Doctor?'_

'Are you tied down at the moment?'

_'No, sir.'_

'May I meet you at your quarters?'

The bizarre request earned him a perhaps embarrassed pause. _'Uh, of course, sir.'_

'Excellent. Thank you. Five minutes, then.' He tapped off, then opened the line again. 'Bashir to Nog.'

 _'Sir?'_ More breathless than Bowers, and the communicator picked up the hum of the warp drive. Nog was back in Engineering.

'Nog, it's Doctor Bashir. Please come to the Sickbay in fifteen minutes, so I can see to that bruise.'

_'Oh-- no, sir, it's really fine.'_

'Then it'll be really extra fine when I've finished treating it.'

_'Doctor Bashir, I'm just really busy--'_

'Nog,' Julian said. 'Don't make me order you. Just please do as I ask, and then you'll have days and days in which to injure yourself with abandon.'

He got his second long pause in as many conversations. Then, Nog answered, _'Well, when you put it that way, sir, I can hardly wait to test it.'_

Julian smiled, and left the War Room at a brisk walk.

He waited only briefly outside the cramped crew quarters where senior staff at least were spared bunking with a mate. Julian's own usual quarters were just around the corner, but he'd thought to spare time and argument by cutting to the quick, as it were. He met Bowers' inquisitive approach with a face smoothed of all expression.

'May we speak inside?' he asked.

'Of course.' Bowers opened the room immediately. A pair of shoes had been left carelessly in the middle of the floor, but the space was otherwise spotless, including the hospital corners on the sheeted bunk. 'What exactly are we speaking about, sir?' he added, following Julian inside.

Julian faced him as the door slid shut again. 'Would you say we're about the same size, Lieutenant?'

Bowers' eyebrows climbed. 'Roughly, I guess. I outweigh you by at least fifteen kilos.'

'Eighteen point three five, I would estimate,' Julian said, deliberately displaying a little of that genetically enhanced bravado he usually took care to hide. Bowers twitched a little, but let it pass. 'But we're a match for height and shoulders.'

'If you say so. Why does it matter?'

'You packed any civvies?'

Bowers disliked either the question or Julian himself. Something, anyway, pulled his mouth in tight. But he answered without restraint. 'I did, yes. I take it you don't intend to head out in uniform.'

'I can't promise return it in good condition, either. But I'll buy it off you.'

'No need,' Bowers said, courteous enough, and stepped around Julian to the packed duffel on the upper bunk. 'It's nothing grand. Should be comfortable, though.' He returned with neatly folded trousers and a dark grey jumper of Casperian spun fibres. 'Roomier on you than me.'

'You mind if I...'

'Go ahead.'

Permission given, Julian stripped where he stood. The jumper itched a little where his undershirt didn't protect him, and the trousers' drawstring cinched tight before they stayed on his hips, but it would more than do. Julian bundled his uniform, carefully folding his combadge into the jacket. 'Thank you,' he said. 'I appreciate it.'

He'd almost thought Bowers would let him walk out unchallenged. He was in sensor range of the door, actually, and it fell open an inch before the question pulled him back.

'That's the new Dax?' Bowers asked.

Julian turned. 'Yes. Saygee Dax.'

'He's... a he.'

'The gender of the host doesn't matter to Trill.'

'But-- you and Ezri...'

He waited for it to be spoken. It never was. 'We were over,' he said finally. 'A long time ago.'

'Bull,' Bowers said, 'with all due respect, sir. Quark still had the pool open.'

'Quark is an eternal optimist.'

Bowers came two steps toward him, shoulders bunched and fingers curling not quite to fists. 'You're telling me an entire person can just be replaced, a woman you loved, and you're just-- okay with it?'

'No.' He had to breathe, twice, before he could say more. It was harder than he'd thought, than it should have been. 'I've been through it before. When Jadzia Dax died, before you were stationed here, we all struggled to accept Ezri. She wasn't the same. Saygee won't be the same either. It doesn't make Jadzia or Ezri less dead. It just... means we have to figure it out faster.'

Bowers struggled with it. Julian pitied him, a little, sure now of what he'd guessed earlier. Ezri might have done well with Bowers. He'd have respected her command, kept the bridge out of the bedroom. Ezri might have learnt to let him.

'Thank you for the clothes, Sam,' he said, and this time he did go. Bowers didn't follow.

Nog, at least, was easier to handle, submitting meekly enough to a brief exam that determined the bruise, while nasty, was already on the mend. Julian gave it proper attention with the dermal regenerator, and took a visit as well from a shame-faced Engineering ensign with a splintered finger.

'How's that runabout?' he asked them, scanning the joints for hairline fracture.

'Old,' Nog said bluntly. 'And it's definitely the _Ohio_ , attached to the _Serajevo_ went she went down years ago. The hull is just barely whole and life support is the only system online-- including navigation. However that man got it out here, it wasn't flying solo.'

'They probably tractored it in?'

'Would have had to,' the ensign opined. 'We reinforced one of the breaches and juiced up the engine, but it's no better than scrap any more.'

'Juiced up the engine.'

'Nothing you wouldn't learn in engineering extension courses at the Academy,' Nog soothed him, a ghost of a too-mature smile on his young face. 'Commander Vaughn made sure it would look all look like repairs you could have made yourself, if you were stranded.'

A fine thought, but not one likely to last all that long under scrutiny. 'Anything else I should know?'

'No. Oh-- the replicator. For some reason, it's only producing human breakfast menus.'

He looked up from the ensign's digit. 'Human breakfast?'

'English scones,' the ensign supplied. 'With jam and tea.'

Julian clenched his teeth. Very funny, Sloan, he thought, and kept private. When Sloan had first accused him of subconsciously spying for the Dominion, his holo-Weyoun had enticed Julian's cooperation with his usual breakfast. It was, for Sloan, a markedly unsubtle joke.

'I can try to reprogramme it,' Nog offered, eying him warily. 'Commander Vaughn thought it wouldn't matter.'

'It doesn't. It's fine. Not broken,' he told the ensign, 'just sprained. Don't splint it at night and as soon as it stops hurting during the day, leave it to air.'

'No magic wand, Doc?'

'The old ways serve,' he intoned, and gave the young man a shove off his exam table. 'Begone.'

Nog lingered just a moment longer. 'Doctor Bashir,' he began.

He replaced the regenerator in its drawer. 'I thought we were on a first-name basis, in private.'

The Ferengi's shirred teeth showed in a little grin. 'Julian. I guess I just wanted to say-- good luck. At whatever it is you're up to.'

His Sickbay always came to life as he entered, brightening as if recognising him. It was a kind of safe zone, ugly carpet and all. Its presentation was a reflection of his own. There was the central surgical biobed, draped with a clean sheet awaiting a patient. There were the PADDs he'd stacked away with the latest physicals waiting to be scheduled. There was a newly replicated gown in Starfleet blue, the soft cotton beckoning. Even during battle he'd always found a measure of calm here. It was home ground. He felt as though he could breathe again. It didn't outlast remembering just how little time he had here.

'Any gossip?' he asked. 'About the mission.'

'The usual.' Nog shrugged. 'No facts. And no-one means anything by it. It's just talk.'

Of all the crew, Nog was the one who would know such things. As Chief of Operations he worked with the largest group of non-comms, the engineers, and as a naturally outgoing young man he had friends at all levels. That he was privileged with senior staff briefings in no way tempted him to join in idle speculation-- but with ears that big, he listened to all of it.

'Back to work,' Julian said eventually. 'Watch your head. Or at least learn to use a medkit properly.'

Nog grinned at him. 'Engineering isn't really all that different from being a doctor. Are you sure you want the competition?'

'There are days when I'd hand it over for an hour in the holosuite, even at your Uncle Quark's prices,' Julian admitted wryly.

'Julian?'

Saygee. Of course.

'Back to work,' Nog repeated hastily. 'Thanks, Doctor.' He edged out the door past Saygee, mumbling something that might have been a hello. Saygee mumbled something back, momentarily distracted; Julian took shameless advantage and made a level attempt to escape into the locked pantry where he kept supplies. No dice. Saygee trailed him to the closet door.

'Julian,' he said. 'I really think we ought to talk while we have time.'

'Can I be brutally honest?' he asked the racks of vacutainer tubes. 'I really don't want to, Dax.'

'By all means, let's just ignore your breakdown back there. It probably won't come up unless we're in some kind of high-stress, danger-ridden situation sometime soon. No chance of that in the Gamma Quadrant.'

'You're not Ezri,' Julian said, harsher than he meant to. 'You don't have to counsel me.'

'If Ezri had known you were that close to the edge she would have tried to, at least. She at least would have tried to understand you.' Saygee stubbornly blocked the door when Julian made to push past him. 'You and she talked about this after Sindorin. You weren't going to let Section 31 dictate to you any more, but that's exactly what you just did. Did Sloan spook you? What did he say that set you off?'

'I'm still under standing orders to infiltrate. It's not a choice I get to make alone.'

'I think you're hiding behind that, and I wish I knew why.' Saygee sighed. 'Come get something to eat.'

'I need to finish inventory before I'm off-ship.'

'Finish it and whatever other excuses you come with after you eat.' Saygee gazed at him even when he refused to look; he could feel it. 'Kalenna will be there,' Saygee added then. 'And if I were a Romulan on a Starfleet ship, I'd want a friendly face to look at.'

That argument, at least, moved him, though he didn't like being so obviously manipulated. 'Fine,' he said. 'But I really need to work later on this. It's supposed to be done every time _Defiant_ ships out.'

'Where'd you get those clothes? They don't fit you.'

'Part of an idea I'm having. I'll tell you both at supper.'

If Kalenna was at all distressed by the glowering Starfleet crowd in the Mess, it didn't show. Or maybe it did-- she wore the smugly superior look Romulans tended toward around foreigners, that reflexive twitch which said her blood was up. Oddly-- perhaps not so oddly-- she sat at table with Ro Laren, their Bajoran Security Chief and resident loner. They made a certain sense as friendly adversaries-- and Julian stepped double-time to be sure he'd get there before any kind of challenge got issued.

'Ro,' he said loudly, announcing his arrival. They had seen him coming, of course. No Romulan on Starfleet ship would turn her back to a Federation crew, and against the back wall there she had a view of the entire room. Ro sat caddy corner to the other woman, for exactly the same reasons, Julian was sure. He included them both in his nod of greeting. 'Kalenna. Finding everything all right?'

'The Lieutenant has been kind enough to sit with me,' Kalenna told him. The jaded smirk she wore did gentle to a smile, he was glad to see. 'We were discussing the Maquis.'

'Commander Kalenna has an interesting perspective,' Ro commented, with irony. She levered herself to her feet. 'But I'm back on duty. I'll leave you to your meal. Try the hasperat, Commander. The replicator makes it almost spicy enough.'

Kalenna inclined her head. 'Thank you for the recommendation, Lieutenant.'

Julian sank into Ro's seat as she left them, eying Kalenna's now entirely innocent expression. 'That sounds like an-- interesting-- conversation.'

'It was,' Kalenna said blandly. 'Bajoran women are refreshingly direct.'

'Yes,' Julian agreed, with less enthusiasm. 'I've been ten years on the other end of that directness.'

She laughed quietly at him, going so far as to lay her hand over his. 'Be a good man and get me some of that hasperat. I feel adventurous.'

'I'll go,' Saygee murmured, and headed for the replicator.

'He seems more stable.'

'I think so,' Julian said. 'Trained Trill generally complete assimilation very quickly.'

'So.' She sat back, relaxing with him there, as much as an agent of the Tal Shiar could when surrounded by people who were not quite enemies and not quite friends. 'And I thought I knew all your secrets, Julian,' she said.

Well, now he was only as relaxed as an agent of Section 31 could be-- which was to say he had to force his spine to conform to the curve of his chair. 'The important ones,' he fired back. 'Besides, you as much as told me on the _Knott_ that you knew. The Tal Shiar sent you specifically to work with me.'

'Yes,' she allowed. 'Though that's more of the story than I was told before I came. You have a way of collecting the powerful.'

'More like astronomically bad luck.' His crew were starting to ignore them, now that he was seated with their Romulan guest. Pretty Ensign Tenmei had managed to get close to Shar again, who didn't look too broken up about it. Julian had played the occasional springball match with Emal, and his partner Marse, Tenmei's off-shift replacement as Conn Officer. Emal and Marse were having a quietly romantic dinner in the way couples long at ease with their relationship did. Emal's hand rested tenderly on Marse's knee, hidden beneath the table. Both men laughed at something said, and cast guilty looks his way.

He'd never actually spent time with any of them. In fact, he'd barely interacted with any of them outside his duty as their doctor. Most had come in after the war, with the transfer of personnel from the Bajoran Militia after Bajor joined the Federation. They'd come with their own social set already in place, and Julian had been part of that rarified circle of senior staff-- Kira, Ezri and he, Nog at the edges, Sisko when he was on station, Vaughn as he'd become comfortable with them. But there were so many new faces. So many who just hadn't been there.

Saygee was back with a large tray. 'Supper,' he said, setting it on the corner of their table. 'Hasperat for the adventuress. Julian, plomeek soup. And a nice, safe vellar casserole for the one who plans to sleep without a spice-induced dream tonight.'

Kalenna chuckled. 'We'll see.'

Julian ate because it was before him, not because he was hungry. It tasted too much of basil, but that was how he always ordered it. It was an odd thing for Dax to remember. Someone had to have written a paper at some point on the extent of the symbionts' memory retention. They couldn't possibly have perfect recall of every lived moment of centuries of life. Although, who knew. Psychic and metaphysical experience wasn't fully understood by science. Perhaps a Vulcan could be persuaded to take up the project. Assuming the Symbiosis Commission would allow off-worlders that kind of access, given the climate on Trill. Thoughts for another day.

Like whether Saygee was spending a little too much time remembering small things about Julian. There was no remedy for it except kicking him off their little away-team, which wasn't his call to make absent a real medical emergency. But then, after this mission, Saygee would go his own way, and Dax's current attachment to him would fade naturally, no permanent harm done.

'You were going to tell us about the clothes,' Saygee reminded him.

'Yes.' He set his spoon aside his bowl and wet his lips with his water. 'I've been thinking about our best approach. It strikes me that putting a Starfleet foot forward in the Gamma Quadrant, no less on a planet occupied with a few thousand recently implacable enemies, might be an invitation to trouble.'

'The same could be said for this uniform as well,' Kalenna agreed, touching her metallic harness with the identifying Tal Shiar badge over her sternum. 'You think a little disguise would help?'

'I have no idea,' he admitted. 'But it would buy us time. We may not be readily identifiable as individuals, if they haven't got access to the right networks. There would be no disguising our respective races and, thus, allegiances, but I suppose we can hope the planet's full of Cardassian resistance and the whole mission is moot.'

'I'm willing to hope.' Saygee smiled over his casserole. 'Civvies it is. Do you have a cover story?'

'For something that sounds like the setup to a bad joke? A Human, a Romulan, and a Trill walk into a bar--'

Kalenna was smiling now too. 'Refugees,' she suggested. 'Escapees from a Dominion prison. Planet-hopping until we managed to get to this Starfleet runabout. Which was unfortunately too damaged to fly long, and stranded us inconveniently above this Cardassian base.'

Julian nodded. 'That's the conclusion I came to, as well.'

'Shouldn't we be a little-- well, less healthy, if we're refugees?' Saygee asked. 'The war's been over for three years, that's another problem.'

'Yes, but not all Internment Camps were immediately disbanded. Some of them were just abandoned, the prisoners left to starve. Some were “lost”-- and the Founders have never admitted how many there actually were. The return of POWs is still under negotiation.' Julian gave in to the itch of his hands and allowed himself to fidget with his spoon. 'As for our own relative health, I can concoct a suitable mishmash of diseases likely to result from extended prison stay. We won't be terribly comfortable. I'm not saying we should do it, but it could be an option.'

'Commander Vaughn essentially gave us carte blanche,' Saygee shrugged. 'Everything we do is going to be off the record, until it isn't, I guess. The plan is ours to come up with. If it adds to the story, I can survive a little stomach upset.'

Kalenna grinned. 'Never let it be said a Trill is tougher than a Romulan. I'm in.'

'Then, God help us, we've got something we can take to Vaughn. And just in time. We'll be passing DS9 in three hours.'

'Good,' Saygee said. 'Now eat your soup.'


End file.
